AD-Pokrainski Museum167
Finally, another well known representation of the rock-birth, but not so popular in the iconography, is the one showing Mithras bursting out of an egg, a clear influence of Orphism.168
Mithras from the moment of his birth is represented as a god that conquers the evil and gives life and light to the earth; a new Sun arises.169 Besides, the killing of the bull opens a new era for the world, with no darkness and evil elements.
4. Main elements of the tauroctony scene:
4.1 The Mithraic cave
The central theme of the Mithraic ideology, the killing of the bull, is mostly represented into a cave, a main element of the Mithraic initiation. There, it was performed all the mystery process and it was considered as the path for the descent and the ascent of the souls.
The cave, or else the Mithraeum, an image of the Mithraic cosmos, was either a natural rock cave or an artificial one, a cave vault. Its origin is not yet clear: it is
167 Alvar 2008: 450.
168 Vermaseren 1951: 289-91; Alvar 2008: 83.
169 Saturn, who was considered as an old god, dies and he is replaced by the Sun god, Mithras. Vermaseren 1951: 297-8.
possible that the cave had a relation to the conception of Mithras being a cattle thief. Many Indo-Iranian myths narrated that the cattle thieves used a cave as their refuge and it seems possible that Mithras, as a cattle thief, used the cave as his “home”.170
4.2 The four assistants
There is no evidence for a proper myth for the cult of Mithras; only some authors (a certain Euboulus and Porphyry) wrote more or less some things about the Mithraic cult. On the other hand, the iconography is the one that helped a lot to “reconstruct” all the elements that the Mithraic cult is consisted of.
In the tauroctony scene, Mithras is depicted as a young god holding the bull down with a dagger or knife into his neck and pressing his left leg into the bull’s back, in order to prevent the animal getting up. Usually in the iconography there exist four “assistants” in Mithras mission: a dog, a snake, a raven and a scorpion.
The dog171 is often shown licking the blood of the bull’s wound. In some reliefs the dog accompanies Mithras Ephippos or Mithras in hunting scenes. The snake, more frequent than the dog, is shown beneath the tauroctone group: normally it licks the blood from the wound, like the dog, its size is larger (one or sometimes three headed) and in some images it also accompanies Mithras Ephippos. Despite its chthonic character, the snake is not depicted with evil and disastrous powers like in the Greek religion.
The raven is a messenger, a “hierokeryx”172 as Vermaseren describes in his article; depicted at the top left of the scene, is giving the message from Helios-Sol that Mithras should kill the bull. Occasionally, the raven is shown holding the edge of Mithras mantle. Lastly, the scorpion, a prominent symbol, attacks the bull’s testicles, probably to obtain some of its life force.173
170 Campbell 1968: 6-11.
171 In Greek religion the dog was usually Artemis or Hekate’s companion, deities of fertility and underworld. Campbell 1968: 14.
172 Vermaseren 1950: 146.
4.3 The torchbearers: Cautes and Cautopates
Apart from the above classical motif there are many figure variations in the tauroctony scene. The two torchbearers Cautes and Cautopates, attested also in Mithras birth, often appear in the killing bull image (earlier in the West than in the East). Their identity is not clear: sometimes they are depicted as Mithras helpers, when they carry the body of the dead bull from the cave to the sacrifice site or they participate at the feast of Sol and Mithras after the sacrifice process.
Usually they are holding torches to bring light to earth and they have their legs crossed. Their normal position in the scene is the following: Cautes on the spectator’s left and Cautopates on the right. It is possible that under these positions they represent the rising and evening-setting sun with Mithras as the midday sun. Thus, their position can be seen reversed; that characteristic appears in the Danube areas and possibly identifies the two seasons, the spring and the autumn.
Their relation to the death of the bull is quite bizarre: in a number of Mithraic reliefs, as it is illustrated in fig. 49 from the Sidon Mithraeum in Syria, Cautopates is depicted looking downward and away from the dying bull as an unpleased action while Cautes is looking upward and towards the killing action, as a favourable one.174
Fig. 49 Cautes (on the left) looking upwards and Cautopates(on the right) looking downwards-Sidon Mithraeum175
174 Alvar 2008: 85-6; Campbell 1968: 30-35. 175 Campbell 1968: 34.
Finally, the two torchbearers, forming a trinity with Mithras, are likely to have another role: that of genesis and apogenesis. Cautes is linked to the genesis of the souls, the pre-existence and Cautopates to the apogenesis, the life after genesis, the immortality. It is believed, in Mithraic ideology, that the souls follow a journey; a journey in which the souls pass from the stage of mortality, the genesis, to that of the immortality, the apogenesis, the beginning and the end of the journey.176
4.4 Subordinate elements (fire, water, crater, winds, star and crescent)
Some divine elements, represented quite often in the tauroctony subject, are the fire and the water. They seem to be means of “purification” and they appear in many reliefs of the Danube areas.
Therefore, crater is an important symbol; many scholars disagree about its content. Some believe that it contained the water from the rock while others suggest that perhaps it contained the collected blood of the bull. Definitely, it is a symbol that through its liquid content gives life to all fluids but acquires further attention and detail.
On the other hand, the four wind-gods are often depicted in the corners of some monuments, as divine traits with an influence on nature.177 The most possible explanation could be the seasons’ identification; through the winds the bull’s death is related to the order of the cosmos, from its beginning till the end.
The star and the crescent, symbols of the religious aspects of the Persian Zoroastrianism, are also depicted in the Mithraic scene of tauroctony. There are some cases that the star is illustrated within a crescent, characteristic of the coins of Mithridates Eupator in Pontus (the king himself and his successors introduced these emblems to the Bosporus).The star and the crescent reflected their victory over the darkness, the evil and were also linked with the cult of the Anatolian god Mên and used as emblems by the Achaemenid Empire.178
176 In Mithraic doctrine, the names of descent (Cautopates) and ascent (Cautes) are also used for the souls instead of genesis and apogenesis. Beck 1994: 29-30.
177 Alvar 2008: 79, 89-90.